Unit 3 — Places We Call Home
Description
Unit 3 explores themes of home, belonging, and displacement through the reading of contemporary fiction with emphasis on the novel-in-verse form. Students read texts centered on immigrant and refugee experiences, analyzing how authors develop character and convey the emotional weight of relocation. Through close reading of figurative language and text structure, students understand how form shapes meaning. The unit culminates in a creative narrative project: students create a picture book for young children that reflects a refugee's journey and captures the emotional experience of leaving home.
Essential Questions
- What are the places that shape who you are?
- How do critical incidents reveal character?
- How can we tell powerful stories about people's experiences?
- What intentional choices do writers make and how do these choices around craft and structure help to convey meaning?
Learning Objectives
- Analyze figurative language and poetic devices in verse novels.
- Explain how text structure contributes to theme and meaning.
- Understand how setting and events shape character development.
- Write a narrative that uses descriptive details and sensory language.
- Use dialogue and pacing to develop characters and events.
- Research and synthesize information about different cultures and experiences.
- Create a visual narrative appropriate for a young audience.
- Analyze how authors develop themes across multiple texts.
Suggested Texts
- Inside Out and Back Again — novel in verse
- Wishes — picture book
- The Book of Unknown Americans — novel excerpt
- My Favorite Chaperone — short story
- Spirit Walking in the Tundra — poetry
- The Rose that Grew from Concrete — poetry
- New Immigrants Share Their Stories — documentary
- A Common Bond — informational text
Supplemental Resources
- Colored pencils and markers for creating illustrations
- Blank booklets for student publishing and picture book creation
- Printed images showing cultural diversity and immigration
- Graphic organizers for analyzing character and setting
- Chart paper for recording inferences about refugee experiences
Language
Reading: Informational Text
Reading: Literature
Speaking and Listening
Writing
Formative Assessments
- Socratic seminars discussing themes of home and belonging
- Small group discussions analyzing character development
- Written responses identifying and explaining figurative language
- Vocabulary activities using context clues and dictionary work
- Annotations of key passages showing character growth
Summative Assessment
Picture Book Project: Students create a picture book appropriate for a 1st-2nd grade audience that reflects a refugee experience, incorporating narrative elements and illustrations.
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through oral responses to teacher prompts about figurative language and character development, supported by sentence frames and visual examples from the texts. For the culminating project, students may create a shortened picture book with fewer pages, use pre-made images or templates with written captions, or present their narrative orally with teacher-provided visual supports instead of a complete written and illustrated product.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from pre-reading supports such as chapter summaries or graphic organizers that map character emotions and key events across the verse novel, helping them track development before close reading discussions. For written responses on figurative language and the final picture book project, consider allowing dictation, oral explanation, or a scripted planning template that scaffolds the narrative structure. Providing a word bank of sensory and descriptive language can support students who struggle to generate vocabulary independently during the writing process. Extended time and chunked deadlines for the multi-part picture book project will help students manage the complexity of producing both written narrative and visual elements.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time for written figurative language responses and the picture book project, with clear interim checkpoints to prevent last-minute overload. Preferential seating during Socratic seminars and small group discussions supports focus and full participation in the oral processing components central to this unit. Providing printed copies of key passages for annotation, rather than requiring students to work solely from longer text, reduces visual fatigue during close reading work.
ELL / MLL
Building background knowledge about immigrant and refugee experiences through visual media, maps, and picture-supported resources before and during reading will help students access the unit's emotional and cultural content more fully. Pre-teaching the figurative language and poetic vocabulary encountered in the verse novel — including terms like metaphor, imagery, and stanza — with visual examples and bilingual glossaries where possible will support comprehension. For the picture book project, students may plan and draft narrative content in their home language first before translating or composing the final English version, allowing ideas to develop without language becoming a barrier to creativity.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting the themes of home, belonging, and displacement to students' own experiences or familiar stories can provide a meaningful entry point into the more complex immigrant and refugee narratives at the center of this unit. Offering structured annotation guides with sentence starters for identifying figurative language will help students engage with close reading without feeling overwhelmed by open-ended tasks. For the picture book project, providing a simplified planning template that breaks the work into manageable stages — brainstorming, sketching, drafting, revising — builds confidence and ensures students can demonstrate understanding of narrative elements at their own pace.
Gifted & Talented
Students ready for greater depth can explore how the novel-in-verse form itself functions as a metaphor for fragmentation and resilience, considering why an author might choose verse over prose to tell a story about displacement. Extending research into the cultural, historical, or geopolitical contexts surrounding the refugee experiences in the texts allows students to bring richer, more nuanced analysis to both seminars and written responses. For the picture book project, students might consider how authors of published picture books for young audiences handle complex or difficult themes — examining craft choices around language, illustration, and audience — and deliberately apply those insights to elevate the sophistication of their own work.